Newbie Finally Figures Something Out (NOT a help request)

There's really nowhere I can post this that it would be on topic, but since this is the hacking section, I thought I'd share this episode of idiocy.

Because I have had so much difficulty trying to just follow existing code, I decided to scale back my ambitions. I decided to perform the simplest form of event editing I could, by telling the game to do nothing. After reading the Event Dump, I chose to edit the event where Raiden was acquired.

As you know, the event occurs when the player talks to the petrified queen in the Ancient Castle with the Odin magicite. After the message is displayed, the game takes away the Odin magicite and gives the player the Raiden Esper, I would blank out the taking of the Esper Odin when granted, allowing the player to keep Odin and get Raiden.

So, I opened the rom up in my hex editor, and after going to the right address (row 000C1F80, column 01), I see "87' followed by "41" to the right. I changed "87" to FD, saved the rom, then tested it by playing through that section.

It did not work. 

When I triggered the event it ended, but only Odin remained in my possession. In fact, I could talk to the queen over and over again, with her tear detaching from her position in subsequent attempts and started to begin at a lower position on the screen.

I got scared, trying and failing to discover what was wrong. I tried to set up a breakpoint to no avail. Why didn't my change work? Obviously I did change something to allow me to keep Odin and to repeat a non-repeatable event.

Then it hit me. I had to replace not only the hex at  0C1F81 to FD but I had to do the same for the value at 0C1F82 as both addresses were code. I had mistakenly assumed the "41" was data and thus would have gotten skipped completely.

So I changed that address to FD as well, and the event proceeds as intended. However, I realize that if I'm stumbling over something as easy as this, maybe I'm just not cut out for modding, especially when all the hard work of discovery and tool building has been done by so many others before me. 

Side Note: I am either REALLY sleepy or my font size is changing in my posts.

maybe I'm just not cut out for modding

Honestly, if you even managed to fix something to make it work properly(dealing with hex too) well, that is already something
that most of the wanna-be-modders that arrive(and then surrend and disappear in the shadow) will never achieve, so
i think you already succeeded where many others failed... be glad of that and keep on!   you're probably able to do even better
stuff(with pratice, of course)

Actually, I think this story proves you have exactly what it takes to do this kind of thing.

1. You decided on a change to make and did the research to figure out what that involved
   
2. got all the necessary tools and documents
   
3. you attempted a change
   
4. you didn't quit when it didn't work the first time
   
5. you correctly figured out that you needed to blank both bytes in a 2-byte command
   

Everyone starts without knowledge and only gets more by doing this exact thing. Being willing and able to work through problems is the only requirement for doing this kind of work. Being smart isn't having all the information, it's knowing where to go to get it. It's always great to see new modders meet their first success. I hope it's the first of many. Well done! Now go chase that feeling!

I'm pretty sure Madsiur was the only one born with the knowledge of how to edit events.

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”

― Stephen McCranie

My first event edits were simple but it did too a time to understand most of the things. I think the key is baby steps and increase difficulty every time you succeed. As B-Run stated, having the right documentation is one of the key aspect of modding, one thing I kinda dislike is having to point out the use of a document to a person multiple time for different uses. Another key is not giving up, in last resort start a thread so you can get help but finding the solution yourself is more satisfying.

I'm pretty sure Madsiur was the only one born with the knowledge of how to edit events.

Yes!

Seriously, hex editing came somewhat quickly but I did repeat XjcsX first event tutorial like 3 time trying each time to do what he was doing. When I got it right I moved to the second one. After that I tried bigger and bigger event edits until I've reach a somewhat good understanding of it. I also spent some decent time on some commands like the timers testing them with different parameters to understand what could be possible. Then I stopped events mainly because I was not continuing my hack so I lost a bit the flow I had.

Edit: @Turbotastic, I edited your font back to normal. While it's not against a rule it was somewhat annoying and looked problematic for you too...

I remember that when I was just starting out I got stuck for a couple hours because I was trying to use the 6A (load map) command and I didn't have the right number of parameters.

I remember when I spent hours tracking down a bug because I moved code and didn't change my branches. Oh wait, that was like 2 weeks ago.

First of all, thank you, everyone.  I am genuinely surprised at such a positive and encouraging response. I'm half-surprised you all didn't throw tomatoes at me for such a self-important post.

maybe I'm just not cut out for modding

Honestly, if you even managed to fix something to make it work properly(dealing with hex too) well, that is already something
that most of the wanna-be-modders that arrive(and then surrend and disappear in the shadow) will never achieve, so
i think you already succeeded where many others failed... be glad of that and keep on!   you're probably able to do even better
stuff(with pratice, of course)

I count myself in the wanna-be-modders crowd. I am under no illusions of being a grand ROM hacker, namely because I have neither the desire nor the skill to completely refashion FF6 from itself. There are a few things I would like to add to tweak the game (and chances are, someone has beaten me to them), but I don't have a burning drive to make these into a reality.  It's more like a curiosity. Then again, the goals I strongly do want to make into a reality are above my skill level in other games.

While practice would help me do routine tasks more efficiently, I feel like there's a giant conceptual gap that I need to close before I can proceed.  There's a level of proficiency that I've seen in the videos posted by members that I'm quite certain I won't achieve.  Most of the threads here are still "above" my level of understanding.

Actually, I think this story proves you have exactly what it takes to do this kind of thing.

1. You decided on a change to make and did the research to figure out what that involved
   
2. got all the necessary tools and documents
   
3. you attempted a change
   
4. you didn't quit when it didn't work the first time
   
5. you correctly figured out that you needed to blank both bytes in a 2-byte command
   

Everyone starts without knowledge and only gets more by doing this exact thing. Being willing and able to work through problems is the only requirement for doing this kind of work. Being smart isn't having all the information, it's knowing where to go to get it. It's always great to see new modders meet their first success. I hope it's the first of many. Well done! Now go chase that feeling!

It is a good feeling.  While I had edited a few graphics with tools, the achievements were muted because it was just changing the shell, not the mechanics of game itself.  On the other hand, this very tiny change broadens the possibilities of how the game can be played.

What was better than making the change and getting it to work, though, was understanding (sort of) why the first change didn't work. I had read the documents repeatedly, but I didn't understand fully what I was reading and the context involved.

By the way, the need to "blank both bytes in a 2-byte command" gives vocabulary to what I had misunderstood. I didn't realize both bytes made up the command. Looking back on it, it was stupid to think a command to take an action on an object only consisted of the action and not the object.  It's like a two-word sentence with a verb and a noun. If someone erases the verb the sentence is incomplete, but its remnant is still there.

I'm pretty sure Madsiur was the only one born with the knowledge of how to edit events.

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”

― Stephen McCranie

That's true. However, I feel like the inept person who just tries, tries, tries, and fails mostly in real life. Forget mastery. Competency itself seems like a pipe dream.

My first event edits were simple but it did too a time to understand most of the things. I think the key is baby steps and increase difficulty every time you succeed. As B-Run stated, having the right documentation is one of the key aspect of modding, one thing I kinda dislike is having to point out the use of a document to a person multiple time for different uses. Another key is not giving up, in last resort start a thread so you can get help but finding the solution yourself is more satisfying.

Edit: @Turbotastic, I edited your font back to normal. While it's not against a rule it was somewhat annoying and looked problematic for you too...

Thank you for editing my post. I did not intend to have all those different font sizes in there, but since I was on the verge of falling asleep when I wrote the post, I could not tell if I were hallucinating or if my post really looked that crazy.

In all fairness, I didn't have much interest in editing events as the aspects of FF6 I wanted to tweak were related to battle and gameplay intead of the cutscenes and non-battle environments. Of course, now I realize events can be used to modify gameplay as well. After realizing that what I want to do would take moderate ASM work and I have trouble with basic hex editing, It's clear I was trying to walk before learning how to crawl.  There are beginner basics about the game's structure that I have just now started to understand.

At least now I have a better idea of what is a beginner task than what is an advanced one.  I don't like to bother people unless I have no other resort and the only way to learn is by doing...so I guess I need more doing.

Dude, no one expects you'll change FF6 hacking's history(the same can be said for any beginner)
Just do what you feel you wanna do, what really counts is that you achieve your personal tasks. 
After you'll get some experience and do stuff, you'll decide what to do with your new hacking skills.

I prefer to play some not too much changed hack than hearing the usual promise of making a badass hack in which you play as Kefka, from his
point of view (all people who announced something like that never succeded, actually they didn't even got close to make some progress  ;[ )

about me i started with the goal of making an ultra-powerful boss hack.
After a month i managed to that and i could decide to just stop there, but i continued... i added mostly cosmetic stuff to that boss and released
the final version... now it was improved and definitively could stop there, still meanwhile i learned so much misc stuff about hacking that i was
able to make a full game hack and so i decided to continue.

With that i wanna say that what you think to know at the current state about hacking won't match with what you can learn in the future,
the same for your future goals.
then again even if you learn a bunch of stuff no one will condemn you if you'll decide to not start a major project